Inching closer, keeping against the house, Owen gradually saw the man’s outline, smelled his fear. He waited — the thief was the same height as the jar and it would be difficult to keep his arms stretched up to work at the lid for long. When he lowered his arms, shaking them, Owen leapt. He knocked the thief to the rocky ground with a satisfying thud.
“Sweet Jesu, you’ve broken my limbs!” the thief cried.
“More for the jar,” Owen muttered. He rose and pulled the thief up by his clothes. The man wobbled and crumpled against Owen. For pity’s sake, what was such a weak cur doing thieving? Owen grabbed him up and slung him over his shoulder. The man whimpered, but he did not struggle.
Inside, Owen dropped his limp burden onto one of Magda’s cots and finally got a look at the thief in the firelight. He was astonished. “John Fortescue! What does the clerk of the Mercers’ Guild want with the riverwoman’s bones?”
The wizened face of the young man crinkled in shame. “Captain Archer, forgive me.” He tried to sit up, winced, and fell back clutching his left arm.
Seeing John’s pain, Owen regretted the fury of his attack. John was a frail young man, aged beyond his years by some curse that wrinkled his skin and bent his body like an old man’s. “You fell on the arm and broke it, eh? I’m sorry. But I’ll be damned if I can think of an innocent explanation for your activities tonight.” Owen searched Magda’s worktable for bandages and a splint.
John lay still. “I was thieving, Captain Archer. ’Tis the unholy truth.”
Armed with the necessary supplies and a jug of brandywine, Owen knelt beside the cot. “Let me examine your arm.” Owen handed John the jug. “Drink some of this.” He felt round on the arm while John drank; a bone in the forearm had snapped like that of an old man. But it would not take much of a tug to set it. “Brace yourself.” Owen tugged. John made a terrible face, but kept stoically silent. Owen splinted the arm and bound it close to John’s body. “What of the leg? You stumbled when you stood up.”
John wiggled his foot. “It’s my ankle. Sprained, I think.”
Owen examined it, nodded, sat back on his heels. “You’ll do best to keep off it for a few days.” He crossed his arms over his chest and studied the clerk’s dark, mud-spattered clothing, his pale, wrinkled face, the frightened eyes. “Why are you thieving, is what I wonder. You have neither the strength nor the temperament for it. Nor the need, I should think — the chief clerk of the richest guild in the city — surely you are well paid.”
“I am after health, not wealth,” John said softly, keeping his eyes downcast. “But I did not start out to steal, Captain. I asked the riverwoman if I might have the skin off the boy’s arm. She refused. Said it must be given a proper burial.”
“Her arrangement for the bones is an odd one, I’ll grant you that. But what did you want with the skin? And how did you know about the arm?”
John bit his lower lip, a naughty child explaining his behavior. “It is for a remedy — for afflictions of the skin. I must bind a piece of young, unblemished skin to my forehead for seven days and seven nights. At sunset on the seventh day I crawl the length of York Minster while chanting a Latin charm, and then I have a seventh son bury the skin that night — the seventh night.”
As his wife’s apprentice in the apothecary, Owen had heard many such remedies. “It sounds harmless enough; except that such charms usually call for the skin of a pig or some other flesh readily available.”
The clerk took a deep, shivery breath, crossed himself. “So it has all been for naught. Blessed Mary, Mother of God, forgive me my sin.” He rubbed his arm; his eyes glittered with tears.
“What did Magda tell you?”
John wiped his nose on his sleeve. “She said that I must accept the truth, that my affliction is not of the skin, but affects every part of me. My body is in haste to grow old and expire. There is no cure for it.” John picked up the jug of ale and drank, then passed it to Owen. “But I thought, what harm was there in trying? The Lord might hear my prayer. Who was she to judge whether He would choose to bless me?” He sighed. “Now I pay for my arrogance.”
Owen understood. Well he knew how desperate the afflicted one was to put his body right. The loss of Owen’s eye had meant the loss of his world — no longer was he worthy to be Henry of Lancaster’s captain of archers. Even after Lancaster’s physician had declared him blind in his left eye, Owen had tortured himself with tests, thinking he’d seen a glimmer of light on the left. “When I first came to York, I hoped Magda might cure my blindness. But she told me that there was nothing more to be done.” He took a drink. “It was not easy to accept. She knew. She said I would ever after see her as partly to blame. And I do sometimes, God forgive me.”
“And why not blame her? She condemned me to sit and wait for an early death.”
“We all face death, John.”
The angry look surprised Owen. “You don’t understand. When an old man wrinkles and weakens into a shuffling gait, he thanks the Lord for a good life and looks forward to eternal rest. I am not ready for that. I have not yet lived.”
Owen pitied him. But surely it did him no good to brood. “Seems to me you’ve done a bit of living tonight, haven’t you now? Creeping out here, slinking round, attacking me.” He laughed, picked up the jug and drank again, waiting for an echo of laughter. But John had lain down and covered his head with his arm.
“What I’ve told you — about the pig’s skin — it simplifies things, doesn’t it?”
John shrugged. “Maybe.”
“You didn’t tell me how you learned about the arm, John.”
“A traveler. He delivered some items to the guild hall. He told me about the charm and said the riverwoman would have what I needed.” The voice was muffled under the arm.
Suddenly Owen jumped up. “He was your partner, wasn’t he? He was out there tonight.”
John lay very still.
Good Lord, he’d been so stupid. “I should have seen it was too easy. You were distracting me.”
“And all for naught,” the muffled voice whined.
“Not for your partner, you fool. He’s got the bones and a good head start.” Owen took the lantern and rushed out into the night. He shoved the flat stone lid off the jar and let it fall with a clatter while he trained the light on the inside. Empty. He shined the lantern out on the mud flat, but he knew it was useless. While he’d been playing the good Samaritan in the hut, the thief had taken the bones and escaped. He’d known Owen wouldn’t be listening, thinking he’d caught his thief — and injured him. Furious with himself, Owen picked up the stone lid and threw it into the river. He wanted to put his fist through the wall of the house, grab John Fortescue by the neck, and throttle him — but what would be the point? John was the victim as much as he. Owen sat down on the bank and tried to calm himself.
When his mind cleared, he went inside, seeking answers.
John sat up, waiting for him, his eyes wide with fear.
“Why did your thief put Magda on her guard?”
“He didn’t know where she kept the bones, and he didn’t want to linger here, searching all those boxes and jars piled up against the house. He said she would watch the bones if we worried her, and then we’d know. He was clever.”
“Easy to be clever when you’re working with fools.” Owen sat down and glumly drained the jug of ale.
Owen went out to the rock as soon as he had word Magda was back. She sat on the bench beneath the serpent, mending a shoe. Without looking up, she said, “Magda knows the worst.”
He sank down beside her. “I failed you. I’ll make no excuses.”